Just Little Tales

Thursday, Sept 25, 2014

Yesterday Apricot almost meowed. He normally squeaks, you know. But I heard him squeak quite loudly and with an inflection that sounded almost like a "me-ow" and I hastened into the living room to find out just what had caused this minor miracle!

He was sitting by the patio doors as I came in, but he left and launched himself up onto the cat tree by the window to look out that window quite intensely. I peered out the window beside him, and finally found the cause of his excitement.

There's a little tabby cat that sometimes comes by the patio / deck, and she (I have no idea really about her gender, but she looks like a she from a distance) was sitting on the deck at the stairs. Apricot knew she was there but he couldn't quite see her from where he was.

The encouraging thing is that he didn't sound angry or upset when he squeak-meowed at her. He sounded more like, "wait, come back!" Perhaps this means that he will be receptive towards having kitty company in the house. I certainly hope so!
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I think perhaps he is comfortable around me now!

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The short fabric tunnel that sits on the living room floor has suddenly (as of this week) become Apricot's favorite place. He only wants to play with the Bird wand toy in and around it. He wants his goodnight and goodbye kisses inside it.

He will, however, pick a secondary spot to have his goodnight and goodbye kisses, but I have to explain each time that I can't kiss him in the tunnel because my head won't fit inside.

I get this view a lot these days.

So it sat there for three months before he decided it was okay. Now he doesn't mind if it rolls while he hurtles through it, even if the roll means he comes out on the other side slightly tilted. It's funny watching him recover his balance. He's gotten very good at it.

And the stuffed stars and moon that hang from inside it are great fun to play with, so much so that he will sometimes ignore the Bird if it has drawn his attention to the star. There are two stars and one moon, and they hang one star at each end and the moon in the middle, and the three are positioned each a third of the way around the circumference farther than the one before, so that no matter how the tunnel is rolled, there's always one hanging from the "ceiling". Only Apricot likes the one that ends up on the floor.

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I have been watching more tv recently, and he will come in and jump up on the sofa beside me. Apparently this is the way it goes: he jumps up, I pet him, he curls up and stays for a few minutes before he gets bored, and then he gets up and goes out the door. Half an hour later he'll come back in again.

Perhaps this is more along the lines of "come out and be with," because he gets very happy when I finish the episode I'm watching and come into the living room, leaping up from where-ever he is and racing over to me. I lean down and pet him, or sit down and pet him, and he loves every minute of it.

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The next day: so of course the minute I write that he only wants to play with the tunnel when I get out the bird, that's the day he decides to add the hallway play back into his repertoire. Silly kitty!

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Sunday, Sept 28, 2014

I have a few "most excellent" photos of Pippin that are my favorite pictures. They number less than ten, and run through his entire lifespan. Yesterday I was able to get my first "most excellent" photo of Apricot.

This is destined to be a favorite photo, I can tell

The situation behind the picture is this: I have crazy birds at my house now. I have no idea why. Birds beyond the typical robins, mockingbirds, and bluejays, too. I think I saw a sandpiper and a bluejay fighting in a whirlwind of feathers across the backyard yesterday. (Apricot thought this was so much fun to watch.)

Anyway, this is out the front living room window; Apricot is in the spiral staircase cat tree in the top cup, trying to get a better view of one of the crazy birds, who had decided for reasons known only to birds that my gutter was a dreadful thing and must be attacked repeatedly.

The sun was falling across Apricot and he had this look of intensely happy concentration on his face. And I actually managed to get it duplicated into a photo. So many times he has "most excellent" moments but I can't get the phone/camera out fast enough to succeed in capturing them!

Retrospective: A Lot of Pippin Posts Today

It is September 26, 2014.

If you notice, which you probably won't if you don't check my blog every day, (or get told to, Mom & sister Sophia), you'll realize that I've posted quite a few Retrospectives for Pippin today.

There's a reason for that. Today is one year since he passed away. I thought this would be a good way to celebrate his life, to write about all the silly, crazy, wonderful things he did and was.

Sister-in-law Dawn made this afghan for me.
I clipped a bit of Pippin's hair and she matched
the colors. The afghan, surprisingly, looks brown!
Only when Pippin was actually on it did it look
the same color as he.

He was my soul-cat, the child of my heart. And although grief is not ripping me apart now the way it did most of the last year, I still miss him very much.

And there will be more Retrospectives to come in the future. After all, I still haven't scanned in the photos from the first five years of his life, and there are plenty of stories there!

Retrospective: Pippin and the Roomba

In 2008 I got a roomba in an effort to help my housekeeping. This was ultimately a failure, since the roomba doesn't replace weekly vacuuming, and mine had a defect where one of the gears would fall out of place and to make it work again you'd have to take it apart and put the gear back. And I couldn't glue the gear back to keep it where it belonged because it had to be able to rotate. So I eventually gave up and put it away, and years later I gave it to one of my nieces who programs computers for a living so she could play with its programming. I understand that's a thing, now.

But during the time I had the roomba, Pippin had to get used to it.

At first he had to follow it around and make sure it behaved itself.

Then he decided it could probably be watched from a short distance.

Really it would be more comfortable if he wasn't on the floor with it.

Because it was a very scary roomba sometimes.

Perhaps it was better watched from around a corner.

Nah, it's not scary at all. He'll just sprawl out and ignore it.

And actually, although he got used to it, it was noisy and still bothered both of us, so I set it to run late at night in the living room (the biggest room) while both of us were tucked away in bed behind a door that hid a lot more sounds than I ever thought, given that it's a simple hollow door interior.

So after the first few times of running it, Pippin never actually saw it moving again. I think he was relieved!

Retrospective: Christmas in the New House with Pippin

Pippin loved Christmas. It was his favorite time of the year. And this is very odd because you'd think a cat who disliked new things would not like the sudden rearrangement of the house with decorations and Christmas trees and so forth. Perhaps it is because Christmas was always my favorite time of the year, too, and he picked up on my enthusiasm for it.

This year we were in a new house, and I got to decorate the whole thing. I was very enthusiastic about it, too, getting decorations and making something christmas-y in every room.

Thanks to a monetary gift from my parents, I was able to get a tall tree.

The new tree, post-lights and pre-decorations

This was Pippin's favorite place to be during Christmas time. He absolutely loved being under the tree, especially when there were wrapped presents. I always made sure to give someone a calendar so there would be a nice flat present for him to lie on, as he wanted to guard the presents thoroughly and that meant lying on one of them.

In fact, he would get rather put out with us for opening the presents on Christmas day, and we'd always have to distract him by tossing the bows to him to play with. Otherwise he'd lie glowering on the flat present and refuse to move. 

I think he was really just playing along, though, because he would always let himself be adequately distracted by the glittering bows being tossed on the floor for him to play with.

The living room, decorated.
See Pippin with laser eyes under the tree?

One of Pippin's favorite parts of Christmas was the wrapping of the presents. On a Saturday before the 25th, some time when I had all the presents purchased, I would sit down and wrap them all. I'd start with a large pile beside me unwrapped, the wrapping paper in front of me, and proceed to move all the presents from one side to the other, wrapping as I went.

Pippin loved to help. And he was actually helpful in many ways. Sometimes he would lie on a corner of the wrapping paper as I was trying to unroll it to cut it, and since without his weight it would persist in rolling itself back up, it was helpful to have someone pin it down. If he wasn't in the mood I'd usually end up using a present to anchor the corner.

The unwrapped presents are beside him.
I'd gotten organization units for myself
and he is making sure they fit a cat correctly.

When I'd wrap presents, I would often toss him the scraps of wrapping paper that one always ends up with, and he would play with them like he was a tiny kitten again. Later I'd have to go over the floor and pick the discarded scraps up and throw them away, because they were (apparently) only fun once.

And he absolutely loved scissors. He always wanted to watch very closely when I was cutting something. Too close. Sometimes I'd have to turn my back to cut something when he was trying to get his whiskers trimmed inadvertently! But luckily for the harmony of the two of us, most wrapping paper can be cut with scissors without actually closing them; you just run the open blade along the paper, and as it reaches the join of the scissor blades, it slices apart quite nicely.

The baby tree from old times.

I already had a tree for my room back at my parents' house. Since I didn't have the space on the floor to put a big tree, what I had was a little four-footer than I'd put on a card table. (I could put stuff under the card table; I can't put the same stuff under a big tree. Thus why I had room for the table but a not a big tree.)

In the new house I decided the little tree would go on the desk in the pink room (which also gets referred to as the guest bedroom). Pippin had long ago that year discovered that the desk was right at window height and perfect to lie on and watch the world go by. In fact, that was his favorite place in the entire house to spend the mornings.

I'm lucky he liked Christmas trees and being underneath them, because far from "destroying" his favorite spot by putting a tree on it, complete with tree skirt, I had enhanced the entire situation.

Smug and happy on the tree skirt

Although I didn't quite put two and two together (as usual) when I bought that tree skirt. It's, well, a lovely velvet fuzzy deep blue. And he's a lovely orange and white. And the stars are sparklies sewn onto the tree skirt, so I can't wash it and I can't vacuum it. It looks much lighter in color now, after all those years of Pippin spending a month on it every year. (I get out "christmas" the day after Thanksgiving).

Makes him look like an angel cat,
don't you think?

And he never once, his entire life, played with any ornaments on the tree save those he was allowed to play with. I put the cat toy ornaments on the bottom of the tree, and it was a game all Christmas season. He'd take them off and leave them under the tree for me, and I'd put them back up each time he took them down. There were several, and he didn't always take them all down each day. Just one or two, randomly chosen. Or perhaps he had a pattern or reason for choosing the ones he did, but it always looked random to me!

2009 (two years later)
Pippin put up with so much from me ...

2011 Christmas Day:
Looks like someone is sleeping in!

Another Christmas task that delighted Pippin was making Christmas cards to send. I do so love sending and getting cards. I have the whole thing worked out like an assembly line; card, short Christmas letter (kind of like this blog only a whole year condensed into one "post"; stamps, envelopes, address labels, and return address labels.

2012: Pippin helping with the assembly process

Pippin loved to help. Although he usually wasn't helpful except by being good company. Often I had to lift a leg or a tail and yank a card or paper out from underneath. A bit like the trick of pulling a tablecloth out from under a tea set and leaving the plates and cups unharmed! He would eventually get tired of this and move ... generally not far and onto the set of paper/cards/etc that I needed next!

Retrospective: Pippin Goes Travelling in 2007

Just some pictures of us driving the ten hours to the family reunion again.

Are we there yet?

Dozing in the sunshine

Mr. Sleep Head would prefer to sleep
the whole trip but then he wants
to play the whole night after.

He's going to need poked
soon so he wakes up.

Retrospective: Pippin and I Move Out

 In 2007, in April, I bought a house and moved out of my parents' house. At this point I was quite a bit older than people usually are when they first move out of their parents' house, but I simply wasn't ready before. I have read that autistic and aspergers people usually grow up more slowly, emotionally speaking, than people who aren't autistic, and that certainly seems to be true for me.

I was worried how Pippin would take this. He'd spent his whole life in my parents' house, with the three of us. What would he think of a whole new place when new things were always scary for him?

Luckily, I had no deadline to move out or in; I could move in any time after I signed the paperwork, and my parents weren't shoving us out the door. I spent the month before the paperwork would be signed packing up my stuff.

I had collected quite a bit of stuff over the years, to the point where my one basement bedroom (albeit bigger than a normal bedroom) contained enough furniture that when I moved it all into my new house (albeit smaller than a normal house) it all fit quite nicely and I didn't actually buy any new furniture for the house for years. Well, except I did buy matching bookshelves to put my library in. But I gave away many of my bookshelves that held my books in my old bedroom, so it was almost a one-for-one swap as far as the furniture was concerned.

Often I'd look around my house and go, "how in the world did I have all this in that one bedroom?"

Anyway, I brought home cardboard boxes from work, and filled them up with books and stuffed animals and other things, and labeled them and taped them shut and put them against the far wall, slowly building a wall of boxes.

Pippin observed this behavior with growing apprehension. Now he loved cardboard boxes, so once when I was packing, he came up to me and I thought he wanted to play. So I picked him up and put him in an empty but open box I wasn't yet using. It was next in line to be used, and was right next to me. I thought he'd have fun, the way he always did with cardboard boxes.

He gave me this horrified, pitiable look from inside the box. It quite smote my heart and I scooped him out hastily, explaining that I'd thought he wanted to play in there and no, I wasn't going to put him in a box and tape the top shut and put him in the wall of boxes!

Well, paperwork got signed on a Monday. I've never actually felt two such conflicting emotions at the same time. I was thrilled and scared to death! It's a big commitment, buying a house. And I had to sign my name or initials over and over and over again.

And what's with putting it on legal sized paper? Why can't you put the contract on normal sized paper so it fits in my normal sized filing system, instead of having to be filed sideways? Gr.

Anyway ... then Tuesday through Friday I had lots of help. We were painting the house (all except the pastel yellow kitchen since I like a pastel yellow kitchen) while there wasn't furniture against the walls. So each day my mom, one of my sisters who had come to help, and my sister-in-law, and me, all packed our cars to the brim with boxes, and drove separately over to the house (which is less than a mile from my parents' house. Brave I am not).

Then we unpacked the boxes into the middle of each room depending on what they were labeled with, and proceeded to paint for the rest of the day. By Friday, using this method of moving, we had moved all the boxes and all the furniture that would fit in the cars, and had the whole house painted. Saturday my brother brought over his truck and we moved the three pieces of furniture that hadn't fit in the cars (my bed, a desk, and I think the biggest bookshelf).

And then Saturday evening I moved Pippin and myself and we spent our first night in the new house. I unpacked all the bedroom so it looked normal. My big bedroom at my parents' house had been divided (using furniture) so that if you "cut out" the sleeping part of it and transplanted it to the new bedroom, that's the normal I was going for. Pippin always slept with me all night, so I wanted that part at least to be reassuring for him.

I put him down in the litter box in the bedroom's bathroom's shower. It's one of those tiny showers and I'm too claustrophobic to use it as a shower, so that's where the litter box lives. And it's always a good idea to start the cat out in the litter box when you're introducing him to a new space. That way he's exploring "out" from there, and always knows where to return to for necessities.

Pippin slowly explored almost the entire house that first night. It quite amazed me, because I thought it would take him longer. Oddly, the kitchen (at the opposite end of the house from the bedroom) remained a "scary" place for years, even when he'd roam freely through the rest of the house.

He even seemed to love having all this space for just us. He happily found his stuff (cat furniture and toys) and was reassured that his food and water were readily obvious in location.

Like any cat he finds the exact center
of the house and that becomes a favored spot.

His beloved cat furniture
is here, too!

So far from being the traumatic experience I thought it could be for him, Pippin quite enjoyed moving out into a larger space. He checked out the boxes and the unpacked stuff too. It really looked like he knew that these boxes were the same as the ones in my old bedroom, and he was quite satisfied that we had brought all the stuff too.

Like me, he always appreciated having the things he was used to around him, and I think it really helped that I'd unpacked the bedroom completely, making it look the same and, although the walls and carpet wouldn't smell "right" yet, all the stuff (bed, comforter, furniture and clothes) smelled right.

The first exploration run

Although it took me a month to pack all my stuff using the time after work, it only took me a week to unpack it using that same time. It wasn't that my stuff got less somehow during the move. It was that for some reason it bothered me so much to have it all boxed up in this strange place that I just had to get it all unpacked.

And having it all unpacked and the boxes all gone made Pippin happy. He could even enjoy playing in a cardboard box again!

Retrospective: Pippin Explores the Old Cloister

In the same 2006 trip where lots of family came, my sister and I went exploring to an old cloister (still operational) that was within walking distance of the bed and breakfast we were staying in.

We accidentally came in the wrong way, through a charming old graveyard, the kind with the overarching trees and the lush grass and the worn gravestones with all kinds of barely readable long epitaphs on them. It certainly looked like an official entrance.

It was nice, though, because we got to explore the old no-longer-used buildings on our own rather than being shuffled around with a whole bunch of other people and tour guide squawking at us. I had Pippin with me, in his carry sack.

The amphitheater

This little amphitheater was my sister's favorite spot. She wanted to sit and meditate for a while, so while she did that, I got bored and let Pippin out to explore. He had a harness and leash on, so if he got scared I wouldn't lose him.

Pippin, intrepid explorer

Pippin was slow to get started, as usual. Since everything was scary when it was new, even after I'd mostly gotten him over his scaredy cat reactions, it would take him a little while to start exploring things.

Trying out a bench for size

But once he started exploring, he usually had a lot of fun.

Pretending he's a prowling kitty

 The benches, unbeknownst to me, were hollow underneath. I suppose if I knew about construction techniques I would have known at once that they had to be; no one would waste that much wood making them solid. But I didn't realize it, and Pippin found this out before I did. Because you see, the ends of the benches are open, so he could go inside them!

Just a little bit left outside the bench

He crawled underneath the bench since it was an excellent hiding spot, and did so before I realized what he was about. Now you'll notice in the pictures that show the whole bench ... it's not particularly wide. Or tall. So a large cat can't turn around.

He's stuck. I had to drag him out slowly by the harness. This resulted in a cat with a tummy full of dead leaves, sticks, and other natural detritus. And of course I hadn't thought far enough ahead to bring his comb. This is a normal problem of mine ... even though I try to think ahead, I always miss the most obvious stuff.

My sister, being slightly more careful of her own appearance than I, had a comb in her purse. It was her comb for her own hair, but she very graciously allowed me to use it on Pippin. And although I did my best, sitting on the bench with Pippin undignified and upside down in my lap, to pull all the debris out by hand, I really needed the comb for the small stuff.

And Pippin, his usual calm self, put up with all of this without a wiggle or wince.

Retrospective: Pippin Goes Travelling and Gets Away

In 2006 we had a big family deal where lots more people came than usual.

One of my sisters and my brother and his wife and I all stayed in the same bed&breakfast. We kind of occupied the whole place!

The lady at the bed & breakfast usually did not allow pets, but she made an exception for me because Pippin reminded her of a cat she'd had. And also because I was able to reassure her of his excellent behavior, as he wouldn't scratch her stuff or destroy anything or meow all night.

But I was ordered that I must keep him strictly in my room, nowhere else unless I was taking him in or out of the house.

The front of the bed & breakfast

We got there late at night ... okay, what I consider late at night. Probably around 9 or 10. I was exhausted from the drive. I set up Pippin's food and water and litter box.

Food and water next to the bed.
Travelling with a cat necessitates bringing
water from home ... unless you want to
deal with a tummy upset!

Now the deal was I got this room because it was the only one that didn't have a connecting bathroom. It was the least desirable room so she was letting me have an animal in it because it wasn't exactly her best selling room anyway. This meant that I had to leave the room and walk down the hallway to the bathroom if I had to go in the middle of the night.

The middle of summer despite the
christmas lights on the stairway.

My door is visible to the right of this picture, at the top of the stairs. Walking along the not-stairs part that is in the picture, you reach the bathroom at the other end of it.

If you've read some other parts of my blog, you already know I have trouble sleeping at night and usually have to take something. In a strange place my trouble sleeping is even more exaggerated, so I took something that first night to help me sleep.

This meant that when I awoke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I was extremely fuzzy headed and not aware of my surroundings. 

I thought I'd made sure Pippin didn't follow me out of the room, so when I got back from the bathroom, I simply went in, shut the door, and went back to sleep.

I found out the next morning I hadn't succeeded in keeping him from following me into the hallway. Even though Pippin was in the room with me when I woke up.

The poor beleaguered lady of the house, who had only let me have Pippin with me there on my promises that he would stay in the room and not damage any thing, comes upon Pippin gingerly working his way down the stairs early that morning. Obviously he had spent most of the night investigating the hallway and closed doors of the upstairs and was just now venturing farther. Three cheers for my scaredy cat for mostly staying put and not running loose through the entire house!

Now she doesn't know Pippin. She doesn't know if she can pick him up or if he'll majorly object to that. Yelling for me to come out and get my cat would be very much against her hospitality style. So she tries to shoo him back up the stairs. 

Pippin very graciously allows himself to be shooed, without running in fright or trying to dodge past her. And this is a strange person that he's never seen before, so that part in and of itself is amazing.

She manages to get him up the stairs and to my door, which she then opens and Pippin goes back in. It's probably all he wanted in the first place, to be back with me. He depended on me a lot for his emotional support and he was probably quite scared to find himself locked out.

So when I woke up, he was "still" in the room, and I had no idea what had happened. The lady of the house didn't tell me about it in an angry or accusing way. In fact, if I remember correctly, my siblings had already been up before me that morning, and she'd told them in more of a "this funny thing happened" way. When I showed up, I basically got told by all of them what had happened. 

Of course I apologized profusely but she said it was no big deal; he was a very well behaved cat and hadn't been a problem. 

But after I got home I talked to my doctor and changed up my sleep meds for something a little less severe so I'd least I'd notice the next time I locked my poor Pippin out of the room!

Pippin finds a nice spot.
No, the stove isn't on. It's
the middle of summer!

Retrospective: Pippin Goes Travelling to Luray Caverns

Luray Caverns has giant permanent billboards that line the interstate I spend the most time on when I drive to my family reunions.

So, not thinking much about the fact that I had Pippin with me, I stopped in to see them, one trip. This was when I still split the trip into two days, five hours of driving a day, so stopping for a tourist trap wasn't a problem with regards to time.

I got lucky, because unlike most caverns, Luray actually does allow pets. You have to carry them the whole time, however. Well, this wasn't a problem for me. I didn't plan to let Pippin out of his carry-sack anyway.

His carry-sack was a large pouch that strapped onto me with the pouch in front. Kind of like those human baby carriers I'm sure you've seen. I said to the lady who told me the pet rules that I guess you don't get many large dogs then, and she said I'd be surprised. They had a guy bring his large dog in a baby carriage, and since Luray is handicapped accessible, the baby carriage was able to go into the caverns too. (The stairs have a platform than can go up and down that you can put a wheelchair on ... or in this case, a baby carriage.) She said the dog was extremely well behaved and just lay in the carriage the whole time, looking around.

Deep caves

The caverns are very beautiful and serene. They are nice and cool, too, for the middle of summer (they are that same temperature in winter, but then it's not so nice because you're already cold). I really love the various formations and patterns that the rock and the water have made over many centuries.

One cool (ha ha, sorry, didn't mean the pun) feature of Luray Caverns is that although the tourist route is the same every time, the caves themselves do not, apparently, have any end. Nobody's found an end to them so far, anyway!

Rock alien

Pippin and me

What surprised me was how much Pippin liked the caverns. Usually when he was in the carry sack, you couldn't see him. He'd hide from the scary world and wouldn't stick his head out at all. But when we climbed the stairs down into the caverns, he perked up and stuck his head up, gazing around in pleasure.

Pippin in his carry sack

I don't know if it was the intense quiet of the caves, or the dark that despite the artificial lighting seems to permeate the place, or something else, but he really liked the caverns. He stayed "out" and watching his surroundings the whole time we were down in the caves. 

We went back to Luray several times in his lifetime, and he enjoyed them each time just as much. Who knew a cat would like caverns?

Retrospective: Pippin Goes Travelling and It's Dry Work

Our family reunions, which necessitated the ten hour drives, were always in June, July, or August, the hottest months of the year. With a long-haired Maine Coon in the car, I had to bundle up and put the air conditioning on full-force to keep him comfortable.

I felt like a right idiot wearing two jackets and pants when it was 90 to 100 degrees outside the car, and then having to take the jackets off and put them on again whenever I got out of the car or got back into it, but since Pippin couldn't very well take his fur off, that's the way it had to be.

If you've ever driven a long way in the car with the air conditioning on all the time, you know that it strips water out of the air like a desert. I could drink an entire 8 cups of water without needing to stop and use a restroom because the air was pulling water out of me so badly. And if I was having thirsty problems, how about my much smaller cat?

The issue was, Pippin wasn't about to eat, drink, or use the bathroom in a moving vehicle. He was fine with riding in a car. He didn't get carsick or meow the whole way (he only said things when he wanted to get my attention, which was rare, since somehow he understood I need to focus on the road). He just didn't want to do the "dangerous" stuff in the car.

Even though he'd never had to deal with predators in his life, he knew bone deep that eating, drinking, or using the litter box made you vulnerable to attack, and he wasn't about to do that in a moving car.

I had a brilliant idea. He would wash himself in the car. And since I'd never used a spray bottle of water for discipline, he wasn't afraid of it (or wouldn't be; he'd never been sprayed before). So what I could do to get more water in him was use a spray bottle to mist his hindquarters and then he'd lick it off.

So the trip I had this idea on, I took the spray bottle with me. Once we were on a stretch of highway where I could spare the attention, I got the bottle out and planned to spray him on his hips, as far away from his face as I could get and still be convenient for him to wash.

Well, the best laid plans and all that. I'm driving, remember, so I can only spare him brief glances. He was looking away when I glanced, so I sprayed ... just as he turned his face full on into the spray.

Sigh. I guess that's the last time I can do that particular trick. I'll have to find a new way to get water into him. And I haven't the slightest idea how ... what is he doing?

He'd squinched his eyes tight shut when the spray hit him, and made all kinds of faces, and licked the water off of his face from around what he could reach with just his tongue, and shook his head multiple times.

But now he had shut his eyes again and shoved his face toward me. For all the world like, "do it again, do it again!"

Sometimes I really doubted my interpretation of his body language, but this, even though it contradicted everything I knew about cats and water, seemed pretty clear.

So I sprayed him again, directly in the face, on purpose. He went through the whole rigmarole again: eyes tight shut, faces made, head shook, water licked off.

And then he shoves his face at me, eyes tight shut, again.

I think all total I sprayed him four or five times before he stopped asking. And he wasn't in the least bit upset when he stopped asking; it was just that he was done now. I felt bemused and amused in equal measures.

After that, I would periodically spray him with the water bottle throughout the trip, perhaps once every two hours. Sometimes he would try to intercept it to get his head sprayed, and sometimes he'd just let whatever get sprayed and lick the water off (the original intent of the spray bottle concept).

2006: One of my all-time favorite pictures

Retrospective: Pippin is Reluctant to Go Travelling

Most of the times I drove to the family reunion ten hours away, Pippin was perfectly content to be in his carseat, looking out the window or trying to sleep. I say "trying" because while he was perfectly able to sleep the entire ten hours, I rapidly discovered that if I let him sleep the whole trip, when we got there and I wanted to sleep, all he wanted to do was play. Since we'd be in a single room either in a relative's house or a hotel room, having him playing even by himself was disruptive to my sleep, and he never wanted to play by himself if I was available to help.

2006: Hotel room halfway there.
Pippin just hanging out on the hotel's
air conditioning unit.

I actually found this out thusly: We were coming home. This was when I was still using two days and a hotel stay halfway through to drive the ten hours. When I came off the tollbooth, I had to roll down the window and hand money to a (gasp!) stranger! Pippin dived off his carseat and under the actual car seat, wedging himself underneath.

Since getting him out from under was going to require stopping the car and getting a better angle on dragging him out, I just let him stay there. He fell asleep to the hum of the wheels and stayed there all five hours to the hotel. And then he wanted to play all night long.

2006: This is what he looked like in his carseat

I learned after that one incident to reach over and poke him periodically to wake him up. I also learned to put his harness on him and strap him into the carseat (stop envisioning a human toddler in a carseat--he could move around, just not leave the seat) before paying tolls!

Well, after a few years of splitting up the trip, I started doing the whole thing in one long drive. Coming to that same toll road on the way there one year, I sort of, er, headed the wrong direction. I didn't realize it until a half an hour had passed and I drove through a tunnel.

I didn't remember tunnels on the way to my relatives. Oops. I've gone the wrong direction. Well, looky there, they've very nicely put places to turn around and go the other direction without getting off the toll road. Paved and straight even, not the kind of paved but angled down and up ones that they have on interstates for just police cars and stuff, and they're angled that way so they flip cars trying to cross it fast.

So I really thought these flat paved cross-overs were really for people like me who'd headed the wrong way. I used one to turn around and go back the way I'd come. Only later, after the trip was over, I found out from my dad that no, you're supposed to get off the toll road, pay, turn around, get back on, and pay at the other end. For many years I felt very guilty about the dollar fifty I owed the toll road but as I could never figure out how to pay them, I finally gave up feeling guilty about it.

Anyway, this meant that my trip was now an hour longer since I'd gone half an hour out of the way and half an hour back. Pippin by now knew how long the trip was going to take, so when we reached the ten hour mark he started getting mildly restless. Not a lot, just enough to tell that he thought we should be there by now.

After I got off the toll road (in the correct location, I'll have you know) I got lost again. Two roads diverged in a (town) and I, I took the one less traveled by, as I discovered when I ended up in the middle of farmland, the kind where there's a farmhouse every five miles or so.

Sigh. At this point I knew that retracing my steps was going to be longer than finding where I was and designing a new route from here, so I stopped the car in a corner lot (I believe it was an abandoned gas station or something like that) and got the GPS and the laptop out of the trunk (yes, so long ago that the GPS was a separate unit) and started figuring stuff out.

Pippin watched all this, and after a while, said, "me-ow?" in an inquisitive tone of voice.

"Yes, we're lost," I said absentmindedly, my eyes focused on the screen.

A pause, and then a rather more impatient, "me-ow!"

"No, I don't know where we are," I said in exasperation. "I'm trying to get us there!"

A rather sulky "maow" greeted this, as if to say, "I was only asking."

So I looked up to find myself greeted with stiff cat back as he was pointedly looking out the window. I apologized for being cranky (after eleven hours of driving and getting lost twice it was rather frustrating) and for snapping at him.

As always, he forgave me quite quickly. He wasn't really even mad at me. Just wanted to get my attention and be reassured that I knew where we were and what was going on.

---

But the time he was really reluctant to go traveling was the time all three of us groups was going to the family reunion. My parents were driving in their car, my brother and his wife in their car, and me and Pippin in my car. We weren't precisely caravanning, as we'd all left at different times that morning, depending on our routines, but we were all traveling on the same roads on the same day. My mom had lent me her cell phone since I didn't have one back then, so we were all able to be connected.

Pippin, for whatever reason, just did not feel like going on a long car trip that day. He was a pain, moving restlessly around in his seat, threatening to come down out of it just short of the point at which he'd get the harness put back on.

That's how I trained him to stay put. He didn't like wearing his harness. So if he stayed in his carseat (with one exception I'll tell you about in a second) he didn't have to wear it. If he didn't stay put, I put the harness on and wrapped the leash around the car's seat's headrest so he'd have to stay put.

He was allowed to come be on my lap on long road trips under the following conditions: he had to ask, and I had to say yes. I only said yes when I had long stretches of interstate with very little traffic and no exits I had to take for a long time.

The difficulty I've had getting the harness on Max makes me realize just how special Pippin was. I could put his harness on him one-handed, while I was driving so barely looking at him.

Anyway, Pippin was pushing the limits of "staying put" and just generally being obnoxious. This of course was a far cry from how obnoxious a cat can be in a car, but for him, it was unusual.

Then my sister-in-law called to check in. Pippin heard her voice on the phone and came diving down out of his car seat, across my lap, to where I held the phone in my left hand to my (left, obviously) ear, and started meowing most insistently.

We could only conclude that he was saying, "Help me, help me, get me out of here, she's gone crazy and plans to drive all day again!"

2006 on a far more contented trip

Pippin had long since proved he would not use a litterbox in a moving car. He would simply hold it until we got to our destination (thus adding a little more emphasis to his wanting to know if we were there yet in the story above. He'd held it for eleven hours, one more hour than usual, and really needed to know how much longer).

I thought maybe he was so restless because I'd dragged him out to the car and started the trip before he'd had a chance to empty his bladder that morning. Maybe he had to go to the bathroom?

So when we got to the gas station to put gas in the car, after I'd done that I parked the car in the far corner of the lot away from all the noise (or as "away" as I could get) where there were trees and sandy soil. I thought perhaps the sandy soil might be enough like his litter that he would go. I put his harness on him and took him to the sandy spot, putting him down where my body blocked the way back to all the cars and people and noise.

He didn't go. I wasn't entirely surprised. He was never an outdoor cat, and he was very good about using a litter box and nothing else, so I didn't really think he'd go outdoors. But I had to at least give him a chance. Just because I thought he'd be one way doesn't mean a pressing bladder couldn't change his mind.

But after this, he was good as gold. Sat in his carseat like a model citizen, didn't say a word, acted like a completely different cat (the travelling version I was used to).

I think, although I'm not sure, that he thought when I put him on the ground, that I was doing the human to cat equivalent of the human to small human "if you don't behave yourself you can just walk home!"

Although I felt slightly guilty about making him think that I might make him walk home, because I would never ever do that any more than the parent would do that to their human child, I was guiltily grateful that it made him behave! Even if I hadn't meant it that way.

The Weather Cat

Tuesday, Sept 16, 2014 (written on the 18th)

Another summer thunderstorm late in the day sent Apricot under the bed. I'd gotten home with groceries just half an hour before he dived for cover, and the sky was a hot blue with bright yellow sunshine and only a few puffy white clouds. I'll grant you that I heard what might have been very faint thunder right before Apricot came into the bedroom and scuttled under the bed with undue hurry, but I mean, it could have been anything.

I looked at the weather report but it said it wasn't supposed to rain until 6 pm and it wasn't but a little after 5. I was rather skeptical to Apricot about the wisdom of going and hiding. It wasn't even a little bit like raining outside. No dark clouds covering the sun or anything.

Ten minutes later, when the thunder was all around and the rain pouring down like buckets, I had to apologize for my skepticism. Apparently, Apricot is a better weather forecaster than the weather people, at least when it comes to close forecasts! Next time he dives for cover I'll take him seriously and go take down the wreath from the outside door so it doesn't get beaten by the rain.

Well, anyway, I now had lack of cat to keep me company, so I went and watched R.E.D, a movie I've seen before and quite enjoyed. I wanted to watch it so I could watch the sequel and know the characters and stuff.

Halfway through the movie, around 7 or so, Apricot strolls into the room. The tv is wild with action; there is gunfire all around the room thanks to the surround sound, and my brave cat is completely unaffected. He jumped up beside me, accepted some petting as per usual, and then curled up next to me. He deliberately coiled into a ball and dropped into place so close to me that his shoulders were up against my hip and leg.

I left my hand rest against his body, loving the feel of warm, breathing fur, and he stayed with me for about twenty minutes, a very long time for him. It was quite lovely.

Today, Thursday, I came home early from work and watched the sequel, R.E.D. 2, and was graced with a furry kitty presence several times. He even got in the hammock by the couch and curled up there for a while, and I only knew about it because he made squeaky snore noises once or twice. I don't know if he was actually asleep because by the time I peered over the edge of the sofa arm, he was awake.

I'm very glad I can watch tv without having Apricot being too scared to be with. I mean, I want to be with my kitty, but I also like to watch my movies and tv shows. I love to read, but there are times when reading is just too much concentration to muster when I'm tired from the stress of work, or just general emotions. So it's nice that he's no longer afraid of the tv.

Really, I wonder how much showing him the smart phone screen with things on it helped. It seems an awfully big intellectual jump to generalize from that small screen to the large screen tv ... but it was a very definite break in the pattern. Before I showed him the phone screen, he was terrified of the tv; afterwards, he was completely at home with it. The evidence suggests that it did have something to do with his change of heart, as strange as it may seem.

Apricot Has a Tummy Ache

Sunday, Sept 14, 2014

When I got home Friday from work, it wasn't long till Apricot heard distant thunder and promptly disappeared under the headboard of the bed. The bed that I was currently putting fresh sheets on at the time. This was puzzling to me, (his disappearance, not my making the bed) because last time we'd had a thunderstorm, he'd tried to brave it out and stay in the living room. In fact, he very well might have if I hadn't disturbed him under my chair.

So what was with the spooked run this time?

I soon found out. This was a major thunderstorm, much worse than that last one, with several boomers that startled me all to pieces. Luckily I was reading out in the living room so Apricot didn't see me jump and hit the ceiling. I mean, there I was, absorbed completely in my book, not looking out the windows at the steadily increasing rain, and there comes a lightning strike so fierce and bright that I saw it in my peripheral vision, followed immediately by a thunder crack loud enough to rattle things including me.

Not only was the thunderstorm loud with lots of thunder cracks, but it lasted for simply ages. It wasn't until nearly 8 pm that the last distance rumbles stopped.

At this point, Apricot came out from under the headboard, wanting to pick up where we'd left off. Unfortunately, that time is bedtime for me, and I've discovered (repeatedly) that it just does not work to stay up later as I'm miserable the entire next day (and sometimes the day after that!)

So I went to bed and he was unhappy with the situation, leading to him playing with the curtain that hangs across my bedroom doorway and keeps the light out so I can sleep with the door open. It sounded as if he was bowling, using himself as the ball. Paws scraping down the curtain, body bumping repeatedly against the door itself ... it was impossible to get to sleep during this.

And I got up and spoke quite sternly to him about it, finally getting him to quit at the expense of making myself feel like a horrible monster. I didn't quite yell, but I was close.

I felt even worse the next day when after my walk, he threw up food. Not a hairball, just food. But he's not that kind of cat, the one who hoovers down his food and then throws it up because he ate too fast. He's actually never thrown up before. (To my amazement, he did so in front of me and on a four inch wide strip of non-carpeted area, making it easy to clean up.)

Now I put this down to being worried about him, but I honestly cannot remember if he threw up before or after I vacuumed. I think it was before, and he stayed out in the living room till I finished the back rooms, but then retreated to the bedroom as usual. He came out after I finished vacuuming, as usual, so I momentarily put the whole throwup thing down to a fluke, but then at some point he retreated under the headboard again (I think before my Saturday shower-after-vacuuming). I do remember he kind of made a point about coming out and then going back in under, as if to let me know that, okay, that hiding was about the vacuum cleaner, and this hiding is about not feeling well, it's not that he's still scared of the cleaner.

Right, he's scared of the thunderstorm last night (not that I blame him--that was one scary thunderstorm and I like thunderstorms) and then I yell at him, and then I vacuum ... maybe it's kind of like when you're upset and your anxiety and fear makes your tummy upset? He's never showed that kind of behavior before (he was eating that first night I brought him home, indicating a rather hardy tummy in the face of fear) but perhaps a touch of something stomach-flu-like added to it?

I was dreadfully worried about him. It's a little much coming on the heels of a coworker friend finding out from his cat throwing up bloody food that his cat either had lymphoma (a death sentence) or IBD, and only exploratory surgery would be able to tell the difference. And then of course my last year with Pippin was punctuated by all sorts of medical things going wrong with him, one after the other. Naturally I was far more worried than the situation accounted for ...

When I got back from my parents' house where I go for breakfast Saturday mornings, Apricot came out to greet me in the kitchen as if nothing was wrong. I put my fears aside rather forceably and spent the day trying to be normal around him. (There was once that I literally gave Pippin an upset tummy by being so worried around him I transferred the feeling of dread to him. Trying not to do that with Apricot.)

Just when I thought I had the worry licked, we played with the Bird and Apricot quit shortly into it, refused his after-Bird treats, and slunk under the headboard again. And of course I had to leave again. I thought about staying home, but what good would it do to have me worrying at him?

I got home late that night, and Apricot met me at the door, sleepily, but still his usual thrilled to see me. I cuddled him and petted him and did all the things he liked, including lying down completely on the floor with him above my head.

I asked if I could take a picture of him.

He's stretched out away from the camera in this picture, and I am mirroring him, my head near his, my body stretched out away from him. Mirroring postures is a way cats communicate "I'm at ease with you" but normally it's rather difficult for humans to do so in a natural unforced way. He kind of led the way with the mirror behavior and since I was already stretched out on the floor, I followed.

This morning he seemed back to normal again. Of course he was puzzled and slightly displeased when I went back to bed. (The only way I can stay up late Saturday night is to go back to sleep after my walk Sunday morning). And I had to cut my walk short due to pouring rain (no thunderstorm this time). 

Plus if you'll remember from the last post, I had that weird thing going on with my legs, and I've been trying to kind of be gentle on them for the last few days so I don't get that ache/lack of muscle power back again. And yes, it occurred to me that whatever caused that strange illness for me had, translated into a cat body, given him the upset tummy he'd demonstrated.

This afternoon late he seemed completely back to normal and very eager and willing to play Bird, so I got it out and played with him, but I kept it as low-key as I could and didn't make the Bird go anywhere he'd have to jump to get to. He actually had to rest several times during playtime, but since we went slow, he seemed to be okay, even eating his after-Bird treats. 

So hopefully it was nothing but a mild virus that was just exacerbated by his anxiety and activity. He's still hanging out in the living room with me as I type this, looking out the window at the dogwood.

The TV is Safe

Today (Sept 9) I had to stay home from work due to being sick. A very weird kind of sick, too, not what I'm used to. Just extreme fatigue and muscle weakness in my legs. I'm really hoping this is a passing virus and it'll go away soon.

But anyway, this meant that I was doing as little as possible, in order to try to rest and heal, so I spent the morning asleep and the afternoon watching tv.

About the third episode of the show I was catching up on, Apricot strolls in, calm as you please. He doesn't even give the tv a glance of his attention, instead coming up to the couch. I held my hand out in invitation mode (this is a palm-down, cupped hand, which invites a self-petting from the cat) and he jumped up and made use of the offer.

And then he snuggles up next to me, facing the tv, without a single tremor or sign of any fear. Of course he left after five minutes or so, but he came back two more times before I finished the tv watching portion of the day.

I am amazed. And pleased. Now if he would only get comfortable enough to fall asleep with me, for long periods of time. He still prefers to be somewhere "alone" for long sleep periods.

I wonder, though, how much of this sudden breakthrough had anything to do with earlier today, when I was on the floor with him, playing on my phone. I put the phone down with Dragonvale running. It has little animated dragons. Apricot could see them and he was quite fascinated.

He even pawed at the screen a couple times, but he couldn't make it do anything. I think the fur between his toes prevents contact because I've seen internet videos of cats playing with ipads and making stuff happen on the screen, so it's not that a cat paw can't activate the screen.

But he was still captivated by the animation, and maybe seeing on the little screen close up made him realize that the big screen wasn't any more real or accessible than the little screen.

So, yey, I can watch tv without scaring my cat! Or excluding him from that part of my day.

Subtle Changes

Apricot, and his behavior, have slowly, subtly, been changing.

He is now scent-marking the house, not just me. (Facial scent marks, of course.) I am quite pleased with this development because it means he's claiming the house as his and I desperately want him to be in "charge" of the house when the kittens do come eventually. I'm hoping that if he's comfortable and confident enough here, he won't cede the house to the newcomers and disappear under the bed permanently.

He was definitely the cat on the low end of the ever-shifting flowing hierarchy that cats implement when he was in the shelter, never offering any kind of resistance to anything another cat wanted to do. I want him to be the confident, happy self that I've gotten to know, even when there are other cats here. The fact that they will be young kittens should help, but I'm still glad to see him claiming the house.

Tunnel Cat!

Playing with the bird has changed, too. He had preferred the hallway and darting in and out of the rooms that the hallway opens to, but now he doesn't want to play in the hallway at all (he'll go back into the living room if I try to lure him into the hallway with the bird toy) and prefers to stay in the living room.

So we play hide and attack around various structures in the living room, including the tunnel you see in the picture. This tunnel has been on the floor for most of the time he's been with me, but only in the past couple weeks has it become a source of major fun.

Now he adores chasing the bird through it. Of course I can't get a wand toy to go "through" the tunnel; I dodge from one end to the other. Apricot is the one that plunges through the tunnel. I've managed to convince him that although he can see through it, for some reason the bird can't see him. So the feathers will be at one end (like you see in the picture) and Apricot will be at the other. I can see his back end quivering with pent up excitement until all the sudden he lets loose and dives through the tunnel at the bird feathers.

He's got that look on his face in the tunnel because I'm taking a picture. And Apricot thinks me and the phone are a very strange thing when I'm holding it at him like that. So I get this look a lot in my photos of him!

---

He's taken to hanging out in the kitchen with me when I make supper, and he had been staying with me while I ate. And then he started climbing the kitchen cat tree while I ate, and then started trying to come over to the empty chair between my chair (and me) and the cat tree. But he was doing it the logical way, which was to step the two inches down from the cat tree platform onto the table and walk the edge of it over to me.

I actually trained him to get off the table without ever getting up from my seat, just using my voice and pointing down. The last time he headed toward the table edge I didn't even look up from my bite, just pointed with my free hand down. And he did.

But the time after that he decided to make a weak attempt to jump to the empty chair. As usual he didn't put enough effort into it and his front paws hit the edge of the chair at such an angle that he pushed the chair away from him and fell on the floor, stiff-legged. I think he jarred his shoulders.

In any case, he blamed me for moving the chair until I realized this and apologized (I had to seek him out as he'd left the kitchen in high dudgeon) and while he has stayed during food prep for the last two days, he has left during the eating process instead of hanging around.

I hope he'll go back to hanging around; that was fun.

---

The pink room (guest bedroom) is holding more appeal for him. In fact Tuesday he went there to that cat tree and I had to follow him with my book in order to be with. This was something he hadn't realized could be done. I believe he'd gotten the idea I could only read my book in my living room chair. He was quite pleased with the discovery and came down from the cat tree to stretch out on the daybed beside where I was sitting.

Often I can hear him scratching the cat tree's sisal posts in there, sometimes after I go to bed at night!

---

There are other changes, less obvious ones. He seems more confident in me and in his relationship to me. I think he's gone with "mama cat" in reference to me; perhaps that decision is behind the new confidence?

He loves to have a good night kiss at night and a goodbye kiss in the morning. Both of these are actually head bumps: I kiss him on top of his head because lips, ew. So he head-bumps me back. Sometimes he does it as I come in for my "head bump" and they become simultaneous. It's sweet except for if the timing is just right (or wrong, depending on your viewpoint), he ends up smashing my lips against my teeth. Ow.

The goodbye kiss in the morning is the change; he had been a little nervous about this one (since I have shoes on and my work clothes on and half the time I have my bags with me) but now it's a definite "thing-I-must-do." The goodnight kiss has been going on ever since he decided to not stay in the bedroom at night.

The other outside noises, like traffic, neighbors, neighbors' dogs, and so on, seem to be bothering him much less now, too. Labor day holiday there was a sharp voiced little dog yapping away several houses down from mine, so not really annoying but definitely there, and Apricot, after making sure it couldn't be seen from the patio doors, just ignored it.

Labor Day cat relaxes with me

I like the changes I'm seeing in him. I wonder what he'll be like in another month ...

Thunderstorms are Scary

Poor Apricot. He hasn't lost his fear of thunderstorms like I thought he might have.

Yesterday we had a whopper of a thunderstorm, and it happened late enough in the day that I was home for it.

At first Apricot did try to be brave. When the thunder was growling occasionally in the distance he merely hid under my chair. I didn't realize it was the thunder doing the scaring because we also experienced a pair of rather determined salespeople. (Now, look, if I'm obviously here, because I know you saw me through the window, and I don't answer the door when you knock on it, get a clue, people. I do not mean come back in a half an hour and pound on the door even harder this time! Grr.)

But it wasn't the knocking that scared him, because knocking has never produced anything scary. I don't open my door unless I know you or unless you're holding an official badge. In which case, which has never happened, but if it does, I'm going to call your official place and make sure they actually sent people. So nobody's come in through that door, and Apricot doesn't know they could.

He does know about thunder, and thunderstorms, and getting wet and miserable during them. I envision him cowering as a soaked, bedraggled, dirty orange kitten under a bush, shaking in fear as the summer storm pours down on him. No wonder he's afraid of thunder and rain.

And when I, all unaware of the true situation, asked if he wanted to come out and play, he actually did come out from under the chair. If I'd just realized, I would have left him there in "safety" and hoped that he stayed there instead of retreating to his ultimate safe hideaway. But the thunder was off in the distance and muted, and I wasn't thinking.

He didn't actually play with the bird feathers though. He tried, but he just couldn't shake the dread. And then the storm was upon us with summer ferocity, sudden rain drumming off the porch planks and hitting the patio door windows.

Apricot couldn't take it anymore and ran.

I followed after a few minutes, to make sure he was more or less okay. He didn't want petted under the headboard, though. He moved away from my hand, but gave me an apologetic glance with kitty kisses (the slow eye blinks) to show that it wasn't me.

And, having finally rebooted my brain, I understood. Sometimes when you're really scared of something, you need to be able to concentrate on it, and not be distracted by other things. Because then you can keep the fear at bay. If someone distracts you, then the fear can creep up on you and overwhelm you all at once, and it's not fun.

Well, since I knew he wasn't coming out till the storm was over and I wouldn't have kitty company anyway, I went and watched some tv. I told him that's what I was going to do so he'd at least have warning when the tv noises joined the thunderstorm noises.

But I wasn't too worried, because on Sunday while I was watching tv he had actually come in the room while the episode was running and ignored the tv and its sounds while approaching me on the couch. I'd lifted him onto the sofa and petted him for a little bit before he got down and left, but at no time did he flinch or twitch or run or show any signs that the tv was bothering him.

So I think he's understanding that the tv isn't harmful. He's just not really into being in any one place for long periods of time with someone. He naps like any cat, but he prefers to nap in high places by himself. Still too much buried fear to abandon himself to sleep while vulnerable.

After the storm was over (and my tv show) I went into the bedroom to see how he was doing. He came right out, and was quite happy to see me. He felt the same way I did, that we'd been cheated out of time together. Unfortunately I couldn't do as he requested and stay awake and out of bed longer in order to make up the time.

He did stay with me the whole time I was getting ready for bed and even had his goodnight kiss in the bedroom (instead of somewhere in the living room as usual) and didn't leave until I'd gotten into bed, pulled up the covers, and turned out the light.

Then he got a snack (crunch crunch crunch) and left out the curtained doorway (very quiet swish of fabric moving just a tad). (Yup, I have freaky hearing. Makes sleeping somewhat difficult at times.)

Aggravating Squirrel

Frustration!

Back on August the 16th (I love how the iphone dates the pictures without having to put nasty numbers on the photo itself) I noticed Apricot being very intense at the window, so I came over to see.

Here was a squirrel. A very calm squirrel who cared not a whit about the cat in the window. He (the squirrel) was eating the dogwood fruit. I guess it's fruit. Little red ovoids that grow in the dogwood tree. He'd go get one and then come back to perch somewhere on that branch you see him on, and eat it right in front of Apricot.

And Apricot actually wasn't frustrated. He wasn't chittering at the window like frustrated cats do. He was just very interested in the squirrel. I think he would have liked to invite the squirrel in to play. Like he played with the mouse, with no intention of hurting it or killing it.

Upshot of Apricot watching the squirrel.

So we both watched the squirrel for a while, very companionably.

Achieving the Goal (in Claw-Clipping)

Last Saturday (two days ago), I decided to clip Apricot's claws again. I'd been doing it about every two weeks (that's the problem with good nutrition; everything grows faster). I'd actually decided earlier in the week when Apricot was kneading on me and I discovered that, yes, they needed to be clipped again.

But he is so excited and worked up when I get home from work that it would be the height of folly to attempt something like that during the week. He stays fairly excited and bouncy happy until I go to bed, since there's only a few hours between my coming home and my going to bed, so I wait until the weekend to do claws.

I told him I needed to clip his claws (that's the verbal cue that lets him know something's up). I showed him the clippers and the treat bag, one in each hand, neither any closer than the other (that's the visual cue that lets him know what's going to happen).

At this point, Apricot astounded me by voluntarily crossing the distance between us (which was about half the living room; more than a few feet!). So I sat down and drew him up onto my lap, putting the treat bag on the floor. He made no objection to any of this.

I clipped all his claws, front feet and back, and he simply sat there, tummy up, back against me, waiting patiently. He even waited patiently while I cleaned the claw clippings off his tummy, which is amazing considering tummy exposure is threatening in the first place, and then I'm tugging on fur trying to pull the clipping out from between fur tufts.

Then I put him back on his feet, experimentally putting him down with front feet on one side of my leg and back feet on another. I was so surprised by his complete acceptance of the clipping that I wanted to see if he was even the slightest bit upset --

--Right now, as I write this, he is asleep on the window cat tree, paws over his nose, and he is snoring. I've never heard him snore before! --

Anyway, by putting him down with my leg underneath him, if he was truly unruffled, then he wouldn't mind; if he was even a bit upset, he'd mind and scramble away.

Nope. Unruffled magnificently. He simply stepped over my leg and turned to wait expectantly for his treat.

Whereupon I learned he can count. To four, anyway. I thought perhaps since he'd been so calm for the claw clipping I could get away with a smaller bribe reward. But after two treats he looked up for more, and got an impatient gleam to his eye when they were slower in forthcoming. After four treats, he was satisfied and strolled off. (The rule is one treat per paw I got clipped. And he apparently knows this!)

I was so very impressed and astonished and proud of him. Far cry from the cowering fearful cat in the corner of the headboard hideyhole. I mean, yes, the goal of training is to achieve this: being able to do necessary physical caring tasks without the cat going ballistic/catatonic, but I never expected it to happen so soon with him!